I must admit that, prior to starting graduate school, I had never heard of a wiki. My first encounter with Wikis was a little overwhelming (EPSY 490 Educational Psychology) and we were to create a brand new wiki page and contribute to 25 others. Wow, how was I ever going to complete that? Well I did and I will admit that once I got used to it, it was kind of fun. I enjoyed the fact that I could read an article and add to it, or comment, or add a testimonial of something that happened to me or happened in my classroom. I also enjoyed the fact that I could read an article and get more than the authors perspective and I could add my perspective even if I didn’t agree or saw a different “twist”. I have since used wikis to search for information or for answers to problems.
Since then, I have used Wikis for a different purpose. In EPSY 415, my project group used a Wiki to finish a project/final paper. It was cool to see what started as our workspace, where we wrote thoughts and commented on each others work, turn into our final product. All of this happened in the same wiki space. It gave a whole new meaning to “research paper”. It was the first “paper” that I have ever written that included video and hyperlinks and pictures. It also gave me a new perspective to citing sources. I LOVE being able to create links rather than use MLA or APA or any other style.
Now with this class, EPSY 556, I have created a Wiki for my personal use. I am hoping to create a personal story and maybe make some connections with old friends whose lives, like mine, or chaotic. Perhaps with a wiki, we will be able to keep in touch and rekindle the connections that we used to have.
I would like to find a way to incorporate wikis into my classroom teaching. I know that wikis can be a valuable learning tool. (Sometimes, these tools are difficult to incorporate into a math class – one because it is math
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September 9, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Melanie Smith
I have to agree with you Rita. Before I began the CTER program I didn’t know have the technology we have used even existed. Now I use some of it all the time. How the times have changed!!
Melanie
September 11, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Jinhee
Can you possibly provide me with the link to your 415 project? It sounds pretty interesting and I’d like to see it if it’s open to public. After (or during) 556, I hope you will find a good way of using wiki for an instructional purpose in your own classroom. Good luck!
September 11, 2008 at 4:40 pm
rgrunloh
Jinhee, the link to the site is http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Filtering_and_Education_(B)_Su08 however, I am guessing that you are interested in seeing the transformation that I was talking about. We actually set up the site with headers and everyone in the group added some thoughts or an outline or typed in “Rita will do this section” then we all added thoughts or links to our sections and to others with some notes like “thought this might be a good site for you to look at for this section” or “you might want to conside blah blah blah when you write this section”. As the process progressed, we each cleaned up our sections, put them in paragraph form, put the links in appropriate places, and deleted the comments from our classmates. What we ended up with was the final “paper” that we turned in. The final product is what you will see when you go to the link I provided. It was cool that we could do all of that and have the notes all in one place. We could each few each others progress all along the way. Actually, we proofread each others work and added graphics and sentence throughout. Now THAT is collaboration!
September 17, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Jinhee
Thanks for the link, Rita. As you said, I couldn’t see the whole process of the project, but could see some revisions from wiki history. I have seen 415 whitepaper projects since 2005 (I worked on compiling all the old white paper projects since 1998) and it’s amazing how this project has developed over years. Yours looks great, too. I hope more students can work collaboratively using wiki tools in classroom and see how their collaboration develops.
October 4, 2008 at 3:39 am
Margie Hay-Ashcraft
I agree too, that we have learned so much from the CTER program! I like being the computer “nerd” at my school and having teachers ask me how to use technology in their classrooms. Like you, I never realized how much of the stuff we have learned that I would actually get to put to use. I think the most important thing I have experienced was building our Moodles. I hope to be able to get to use it soon! Wiki too is a fantastic program! I hadn’t thought of building a personal wiki! Our family has been trying to share information about geneology, but no one really wants to maintain an official “homepage”. Wiki could be a great way to let everyone share information and not have one person posting information and running a site.
Today I found Photobucket, and I have been uploading some pictures. I also signed up for a delicious page a while back, and I think that may be the single most important decision I made this semester! I can’t believe how many links I have already added and how many times a week I access it from school or when I am away from my “main” computer! I guess I never really thought I would own more than one computer at a time either!!
When I think bout the fact that until 1994 I had never even worked on a computer, I am still a little awestruck by the things we are doing now! You mention the parent component of your school’s garde program, and I think about how helpful that would have been for me when my kids were in high school, way back in 2006! I taught in the same school that my kids attended and I still wasn’t able to get the up to date information that our program, Skyward, gives parents access to! During a conversation with my principal the other day I said that I would have had to call 3 offices and 8 teachers to get all the information the parents can access now from their home or office! We just put our program online a few weeks ago, but we have already seen an increase in attendance and a decrease in missing homework! Parents are emailed 20 minutes into any class period that their student is marked absent! Way cool!!
Good luck with those A-P classes! I taught AP literature for a few years and it was the toughest class I have ever taught!
Margie